Leslie Dane walked away to a window and stood looking out with his back turned to his friend.
"I saw her look at you, Leslie," Carl went on, "and that minute she fell back and fainted. They said that she struck her head against the jardiniere, which caused her to faint. But I know better. She may have struck her head—I do not dispute that—but the primal cause of her swoon was the simple sight of you!"
"I do not know why you should think so, Carl," said his friend, without turning round. "It is not plausible that the mere sight of a stranger should have thus overcome her. Am I so hideous as that?"
"You were not a stranger," said Carl, overlooking the latter query, "for in that moment when she bowed to you it flashed over me like lightning who she was. I was mistaken when I thought I had met her before. She was utterly a stranger to me. But I had seen her peerless beauty portrayed in a score of pictures from the hand of a master artist. It is no wonder the resemblance haunted me so persistently."
There was silence for a minute. Leslie did not move or speak.
"Leslie, you cannot deny it," Carl said, convincingly: "the beautiful Mrs. Carlyle is the original of the veiled portrait you used to keep in your studio, and which you allowed me to look at only on the occasion when you painted it out."
"I do not deny it," he said, in a voice of repressed pain. "What then, Carl?"
"This, mon ami—she was false to you! I do not know in what way, but possibly it was by selling herself for that old man's gold. You owe her no consideration. Why should you curtail your holiday and disappoint your friends and admirers merely because her guilty conscience feels a pang at meeting you? You two can keep apart. Paris is surely large enough for both to dwell in without jostling each other."
What Leslie Dane might have answered to this reasoning will never be a matter of history, for before he could open his lips to speak there was a thundering rap at the door.
In some suspense he advanced and threw it open.